And Then There Were Two
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The month-and-a-half-long trip will be the band’s last. In late August, Cohen and his fiancee, Jules Kim, plan to move to London, where he’ll study critical theory at the London Consortium and she’ll be doing postdoctoral work at the Institute of Psychiatry. Cohen and Lenzi knew Saint would be the band’s swan song when they began working on it in February, so instead of trying to recruit permanent band members they took advantage of the flux, using Klos on bass but rotating in five drummers: Roth, Califone associates Ben Massarella, Brian Deck, and Joe Adamik, and ex-We Ragazzi drummer Alianna Kalaba. “It was a really weird process,” says Cohen. “We had kernels of ideas for songs, but we didn’t want to work it out completely without a drummer.” He and Lenzi would meet with the drummer assigned to a given song and jam on those ideas with tape rolling. “We’d just kind of play it out without thinking about an arrangement of where it would go next.” Listening back later, they’d sort out the most interesting parts, stringing them together into loose arrangements to give back to the drummer. Generally the songs were recorded two or three weeks later.
As recently as May, Cohen and Lenzi were rehearsing with Klos and drummer Danni Iosello (formerly of Sin Ropas) to translate the songs for the stage, but both had backed out by the end of that month. Rather than cancel the tour the duo decided they’d just do everything themselves, once again taking advantage of a bad situation to try something interesting. Lenzi–who was the drummer in Number One Cup–and Cohen will start each song by laying out a rhythmic framework on drums and bass, sample and loop it, and then move over to their guitars and synthesizers. “The technical aspect of it is kind of daunting,” admits Cohen.
Nashville songwriter Jim Lauderdale was here in March to support last year’s solid but underwhelming hodgepodge The Other Sessions (Dualtone), but now he’s got two new albums out, and one of them ranks as his best work since the mid-90s. Advance reports touted The Hummingbirds as an all-acoustic outing, but it doesn’t depart much from the pedal-steel-saturated modern-country sound he’s worked with his whole career. His knack for strong, unpredictable melodies is undiminished, and he seems to have shaken off whatever was eliciting the sentimental treacle that sullied his last few projects. On the other new release, Lost in the Lonesome Pines, Lauderdale pairs up with bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley for their second collaboration. While Lauderdale is certainly competent enough at writing in the old-timey style, the real treat is getting to hear Stanley attack a new repertoire.
